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Sky’s the Limit

By Dick Cavett July 3, 2009 10:00 pmJuly 3, 2009 10:00 pm

June and July always contained my two favorite days of the year.

The first of them, chronologically, was that longed-for, ached-for day when the old-fashioned roman-numeraled, one-click-a-minute school clock on the wall hit III/XV. The magical 3:15 that cued Miss Gabus, or Miss Fuchs, or Miss Swanson, etc. to utter the words, “Everyone have a nice summer.”

I can almost bring back that glorious feeling, exiting Prescott School in Lincoln, Neb., brimming with joy that months would go by without having to sit half-brain-dead in a dun-colored room, acquiring such vital knowledge as the principal export of Argentina from, alas, generally colorless teachers. Absolutely nothing in life even remotely resembles that particular thrill: a whole summer ahead.

Not all states let you out of school at the same time. I was in one of the luckiest. Our last day might even have been in May, because I recall my father’s saying, more than once, “We may not make much money [all my three parents were teachers], but by God we get paid on a year-round basis, with three whole months off. How many people can say that?”

(I’d love to know what my parents made, teaching in the ‘40s and ‘50s. It had to be a good bit more than my dad made during the Big Depression, when he beat out some 20 or so desperate competitors for the honor of teaching high school English in Comstock, Neb., to mostly farmers’ children, for a sorely, sorely needed $900 [sic] a year. For no extra remuneration, he was granted the privilege of also coaching football, baseball and basketball, and staging the senior play.)

The only problem with the last day of school (oh, how those words still resonate!) was that June still had to be gotten through before the Fourth of July.

*******

Fireworks!

The word still raises the hair on my arms. (The lower arms, mainly.) Fireworks of all kinds were legal back then in Nebraska, and the opening of the first fireworks stand at the edge of town meant infinitely more to me than the first crocuses did to the flower-worshipper, the robin to the bird-lover . . . well, you get the point.

I didn’t like fireworks. I loved them. (Pyrotechnomania?) And I don’t mean the stuff that girls and sissies liked: fountains, sparklers, pinwheels and those infantile “snakes.” I mean the big stuff. The heavy ordnance. Cherry bombs, torpedoes, aerial bombs, two-, three- and even six-inchers (jumbo firecrackers). And, once, a 12-shot repeater aerial bomb.

Because I was rich — yes, richer than a king, from doing magic shows for up to $20 a Kiwanis Club or church basement appearance — I was able, one memorable year, to buy from the fireworks catalog the “Jumbo Assortment.” The company name may have been “Spencer Fireworks,” or something, somewhere in Ohio. I’d love to know what my order in, say, 1949, cost.

And one day, a mail truck pulled up in front of the house and unloaded a box. Judging from its size, I guessed my folks had bought a living room easy chair. It was feet in every direction.

It took an hour to unpack: rockets, Roman candles, aerial bombs, “ash cans” and cherry bombs, pinwheels, bushels of brick-sized packages of every brand of firecracker. And topping everything, a single one-pound aerial bomb. Also, negligibly, a generous amount of the despised “safe & sane” fountains, sparklers and snakes. For little kids and girls.

“LAY ON GROUND. LIGHT FUSE. RETIRE QUICKLY.”

I pity anyone for whom those printed words were not a feature of youth. (Could that familiar phrase from the life of everybody who ever bought Chinese firecrackers have contributed to a current language problem? I mean the one where, seemingly, somewhere between seven and ten people in the entire populace know the difference between “lay” and “lie”?)

Let’s admit right now: firecrackers and fireworks can be hellishly, horribly dangerous.

Nevertheless, my friend James J. McConnell (then Jimmy) and I, our pockets loaded with super-powered cherry bombs, set out to do some damage. These cherry bombs were the kind you could throw into a lake, pond or stream and they, having sunk — and thanks to their waterproof fuses — would explode below the surface. They were too powerful to blow a tin can 10 feet into the air the way a firecracker would. They’d simply blow it inside out before it left the ground. As most kids know (even if not first-hand), they can be flushed down a toilet, as someone did when I was at Yale, thereby removing a considerable amount of venerable plumbing. And not just on one floor (mercifully, there were no reports of anyone’s having been seated at the time).

On this particular unlucky day, I wedged a “cherry” between the upright leg of a farmer’s heavy wooden sign and the sign itself. Standing 10 feet away proved insufficient. I thought I felt something hit my face. “Look at your shirt,” Jim said. My white undershirt was dotted with red spots where tiny chunks of wood had entered it — and me.

Failing to learn from this — and under the illusion of immortality that goes with extreme youth — we found a potentially much worse object for demolition lying beside the road. Someone had thrown out one of those concrete Christmas tree bases; at least 10 pounds of solid concrete, shaped like an immense gum drop, white, with a hole for the sawed-off trunk.

What we expected was not what happened. We tossed a cherry bomb — or possibly it was an equally powerful ash can — into the hole, and retired quickly. Baroom!! A jagged chunk of the thing the size of a clenched fist whizzed, screeching, past my right ear with about five inches of clearance. The closest I was to come to know what vets described when bullets or grenade fragments zipped past their head. One step to the left and you’d be reading someone else right now.

*******

On that July of the Jumbo Assortment, Jim and I were allowed to sleep out on his porch the night of the 3rd, which, it felt to us, had taken eons to come. I had already sold pounds of fireworks from the mammoth assortment. (Jim pointed out my business acumen. I had marked one of the items spread out on a bed for viewing — a small pack of firecrackers — as: “10c. each / or 2 for a quarter.”)

We awoke on the porch about 4:00 a.m., not having slept much. It was going to be a clear, hot Nebraska summer day. I doubt that it had occurred to either of us that God might wreck our Fourth with rain.

I should note that I don’t recall our parents ever expressing any particular worries about our detonations. My dad made the rocket trough and did remind us that his dad, in showing him and his little brother how not to hold a firecracker, dispensed with part of a finger. (We did impress girls, or so we thought, by squeezing little “lady finger” firecrackers tightly by the butt end between thumb and finger, and letting them explode without letting go.)

Jim and I had fondled and cradled and caressed the star item in the assortment: a single, one-pound aerial bomb. We began the big day with it. It was just before sunrise. There was no one else up. We lovingly carried it to the nearby grade school playground, lit it and stood back.

With the propelling explosion on the ground, the payload the size of an orange rose upward in what seemed a slow and stately ascent — and went off. Shock waves. Only a modest but gratifying number of school windows broke. We ran.

****

In later years, I had two fireworks-related adventures. I got, through some connection I’ve forgotten, to be on the Grucci fireworks barge at a display on Long Island. It was scary. Their aerial bombs made Jim’s and mine look like lady fingers. And the lighters, scrambling around on deck setting them off, were constantly showered with sparks. So were the unlit fireworks. I stepped part-way over the side and lowered myself behind some protection from what seemed like the inevitable conflagration. This was a good bit after the year a Grucci barge did blow up in the Hudson and onshore spectators, unaware of the deaths, applauded the wondrous sight.

George Plimpton was, like me, also queer for fireworks. (Mayor John Lindsay had made him unofficial “Fireworks Commissioner” of New York City.) At one of Plimpton’s annual displays at his place on Long Island, I left the crowd and sneaked down to near the fire trucks and launching area, getting there just as a rocket changed course, and, NASA Challenger-like, went sideways instead of up. It landing on an onlooker’s blanket in a magnificent explosion of red stars, winning her $60,000.

***********

Back in Nebraska. One awful year, suddenly, it was all over. The state legislature did its dirty work. Not a total ban. Just no more big stuff.
In some states, do-gooders have legislated away everything but sparklers; oblivious, apparently, to the fact that the gentle sparkler, with its 1,000- degree temperatures, causes more severe injuries and third-degree burns than all other fireworks combined.

Every year when the Fourth approaches and I long for the good old days, as I know Jim does, I find it hard to believe that the resonant date will pass and I won’t light a single fuse. I know you can’t legally buy firecrackers in New York City, and I know it’s not wise to confess to potential crimes, but if someone were to emerge from a doorway today, hawking a verboten package of Zebras . . . .

I think we suffer(ed?) from the same affliction and I like your choice of nomenclature. Though I recall “LAY ON GROUND. LIGHT FUSE. GET AWAY” as the terse warning meant to be ignored.

I think I have to say that the illegal status of fireworks only heightened the thrill of fireworks in my youth.

Taking the train to the North End of Boston to buy them from the Italians offering hushed tones of, “you guys looking for fireworks?” Looking over their list and rattling off a well planned order. Hustling down an alley to wait nervously in a courtyard for our dealer to come back with the shopping bags filled with our goods. Quickly swapping them for cash and secreting them into our gym bags. Of course we always went in sufficient number that they wouldn’t dare to have their friends mug us and take our fireworks back for resale, which happened to more than a few unfortunates. Then came the difficult task of trying to look casual on the train home while concealing what seemed an armory’s worth of explosives (boy that seems far more nefarious today then it did then).

I think I understood how the illegal drug trade works at ten years old thanks to this system. We would go into the city and buy fireworks and then sell them to the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t go, for a hefty markup of course. The ten cents per pack brick of firecrackers was sold (often behind bleachers at little league games) at twenty-five cents a pack and so on. This money would then buy us more fireworks until by the fourth of July we were swimming in them for a low initial outlay.

My street had a huge party run by the older kids, those in their late teens and twenties, on the fourth of July for years. Ten kegs of beer packed in snow hauled in from the local skating rink’s Zamboni and tons of fireworks annually. The cops would respond to complaints, but only because they had to. At some point later in the night the order would come down from them to, “keep it just to the display stuff from now on.” It seemed a fair bargain in exchange for our blantant lawbreaking. We somehow managed to keep all our fingers and eyes as well.

To this day I can vividly remember the smell of stale beer and gunpowder mixed, which always evokes the fifth of July and the aftermath of our favored holiday. Thank you for your column which brings back these and so many other memories, maybe I’ll drop by the North End today…you lookin’ for fireworks?

Like Mr Cavett I also loved shooting off fireworks on the 4th. The only problem was that I grew up in NYC, so at 57 years of age I still have not gotten it out of my system. The 4th of July is still one of my favorite days of the year.

I’ll never forget the night back in the early 70s in Tepotzlan, Mexico, when my friend bought a couple of dozen hand-made rockets from some people in the village. These were actually small sticks of dynamite on launching rods – imagine a bottle rocket X 100. To make a long story short, one exploded only 4 yards from my upraised hand (yes, I was holding it in my hand before releasing it – we were playing chicken) – the concussion tore a lot of skin off of my hand and the side of my face and burned me. The next day a doctor told me that he saw dozens of kids who lost hands due to fireworks every year. Since then, I cringe whenever something explodes. I also have dreams of the torch exploding in the hand of the Statue of Liberty.

what about…m80’s, collecting and trading the beautiful labels, where’s Macau, launching cherry bombs with a bow and arrow or sling shot, the grand finale, and the worst part of the day when the ground crew waved a red flare to signal the show was over till next year.

Mr. Cavett, I’m also a firework fanatic. I had the distinct pleasure of living in China through two Lunar New Year celebrations. I would encourage you to visit one of the big cities that allows fireworks during that time. In Tianjin, we could ride our bikes down a boulevard with hundreds of “big stuff” displays going off on both sides. It is something I will never forget.

Mr. Cavett, every pyrotechnomaniac should spend at least one New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam. The wide ranging arsenal detonated at midnight by countless revelers will fulfill every firework-phile’s fancy.

Mr. Cavett’s tales of firework’s dangerous side will likely jog other similar memories.

Growing up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn in the 1950’s, we exulted in blowing up whatever looked interesting. The old-fashioned glass soda bottles were prized for being able to withstand multiple firecracker explosions – but they did break.

We used to carry our firecrackers in our jeans. As the firecrackers would leak powder in the pockets, being careful with our lit “punks” was important.

Once, I remember setting my pocket on fire – a friend luckily grabbed a hose and put out the brief fire. Then he kept spraying until well after the danger had passed. He thought it was funny, and so did I.

You are a fantastic writer, sir. Now can you put it to a greater story? I’m thinking, and I say this because I’m untethered by practical concerns or anything that resembles an understanding of the facts, a novel, not an autobiography.

Thanks, Mr. Cavett. I got quite a bang out of this. My fireworks adventure story has to do with the custom bottle rockets a guy who used to own the local fishing tackle store used to make. This guy crafted his own fishing poles(fiberglass, of course) and he was pretty handy with fireworks too. He took sawed off aluminum broomsticks for the body of the rocket and then added plenty of regular size fire crackers. The real beauty of his homemade fireworks contraptions was that within the body of each rocket was a series of miniature model rocket engines with their own set of firecrackers attached . What would happen when the broomstick exploded and released the indivual rockets was anybody’s guess. Most often it seemed that the trajectory of the individual series of miniature rockets was eathward. We often lit these custom fireworks off in the vicinity of 8 Mile Rd. in Detroit. I wonder if Eminem ever did this. Have a great 4th of July, Mr. Cavett. And thanks for the fireworks.

I believe Mr. Cavett would enjoy this news piece. I live 8 miles from the fireworks store, evidently on the correct side of the Mason-Dixon line in Maryland. The store is just off Interstate 83… and 2 miles from the state line.

In 1947, I took a year off from college to find out if I really wanted to work with children. I taught 4th grade in Cimarron, New Mexico. My salary was $1800 as a beginning teacher. On the train going out, I learned that the going salary for new teachers in nearby states was closer to $1100.

The greatest 4th ever! The fire department supervised an enormous fireworks display the evening of the 4th each year at the football stadium at University of Colorado, Boulder. Huge bombs and set pieces filled the field. One year during the late 1940’s, something misfired at the start and the whole works went up in less than 10 minutes! Magnificent! Wow!

Great piece – brings back the Pyrotechnomania from my Texas youth. However, there was a key element in your arsenal you overlooked – bottlerockets. Subtle, verstile, inexpensive (sold by the gross) – a cornerstone of any fourth of July purchase. Like Roman candles, the black cats (brand of choice) were designed to be remotely launched, but we all knew that the sign of manhood was the ability to effecively hand launch on the run at other kids or, later at night, at passing cars. Just thinking about those wars brings that delicious, gunpowder smell rushing back. Thanks

Now that I am living in Lincoln, a few blocks from Prescott, I will venure down to that recently restored elementary school with my own pyrotechnomanic kids (girls, none the less) and see what damage I can do tonight. Cheers.

My memories of youthful fireworks are quite as glorious, but like most everyone of my generation remembers playing around with cherry bombs, M80’s, etc. I now live in a place where they have banned anything that leaves the ground and explodes, or even explodes on the ground. Luckily, I have still been able to feed my addiction as an adult by joining a fireworks organization (WPAG – Wisconsin Pyrotechnics Arts Guild – which has won the National competition for clubs 6 years running) and the PGI (Pyrotechnics Guild International). The annual PGI convention in August provides shows and shells the likes of which 95% of the public never has a chance to see.

Dick’s description of being on the barge is completely apt. I was one of those guys running around setting off the mortars. Let me tell you the thump of a 6″ mortar going off within a couple of feet of you is something else. Its far louder than the big bang the audience hears from the aerial salute.

Well, we survived it with only the occasional injury as children and very rare death (those that die typically come from big display crews when something goes horribly wrong). But now we live in the namby-pamby world where fear of lawsuit dominates every public act and even relatively safe fireworks are often banned. I long for the mindset of my youth when adults weren’t afraid to let kids have fun.

Growing up in Coney Island, we were treated to a fireworks show from a barge every Tuesday evening at 9pm…..and it was glorious ! The anticipation worked on us all through the week and especially that day, until finally, my sister and I were able to lay in the cool grass and say ,
“Oohhh, and Ahhhh ” to our favorite ones.
Like any 10 yr old, I longed for some explosives of my own…..and like you, Dick Cavett, especially the BIG ones.
That summer, we made a trip to visit some relatives in Mississippi, where low and behold, there was a legal fireworks stand ! I bought as much as I could afford, with the most powerful items being the much adored cherry bombs.
Later that day, we set off to find something we could blow up. While in Laurel, in the city park, we happened upon a pond and there discovered an old volleyball that had been split open and left at the banks’ edge. My idea was to drop a lit cherry bomb into it and throw it out the the middle of the pond and watch it go boom.
Like your epsiode, Dick, this is not what was to happen. My older cousin, Steve, was entrusted to light the cherry bomb and drop it into the split open ball, as I held it and heaved it . This seemed like a simple task to me…but after lighting it, he got nervous, and when he dropped the lit bomb it bounced off the side of the ball and dropped to the ground. I recall this moment with absolute clarity, even now some 44 years later…..holding the wet volleyball, seeing the cherry bomb bounce off the edge of the ball, watching it bounce to the ground, fuse sparkling, right next to my foot. It was pretty clear we needed to evacuate the area…no time to pick the thing up…but, as I turned to run a large tree suddenly loomed up in front of me. Without hesitation I ran immediately in the opposite direction, which, surprisingly, was into the pond.
Wa-HOOM ! went the bomb. and splish-splash went Michael. Fortunately, unhurt, I energed from the water,
and had to listen to my friends and cousin laughing and jeering at me the whole way home.
I suppose one could say this dampened my enthusiasm for fireworks….but only for a day. The next day I was out there again looking for things to blow up….I just wouldn’t let Steve be the lighter, and it wouldn’t be by a pond.

The enjoyment of fireworks is one of the saddest things about our species. Every year I dread the approach of the Fourth when I have to witness my dog’s fear and anxiety amid the destruction of domestic tranquility. New Yorkers should be happy to live in a place which prohibits the sale of these devices from Hell. Would that it were so in bankrupt California.

I just finished reading your piece to my wife as we had our first cup of coffee here in Woodsshire in Lincoln, Nebraska. Thank you for bringing back the memories of childhood 4th of July adventures in the 1950’s when city cousins from the West Coast came to mid-Nebraska for a real mid-summer celebration.

One of my best memories was helping my father launch corn cobs from a 4 foot by 1 1/2 inch metal pipe with fire crackers – fun but rather mundane as we followed the cob arch through the air out into the cornfield. That got old so he whittled a smooth perfect sized wooden plug for launching with a cherry bomb. I’m sure we did not run back far enough but stood there as the explosion happened and the plug disappeared out of sight and never ever seen. Never done again. After which we went down to the creek and continued to blast water into the air. Much safer. Wonderful memories.

In Ohio, it is legal to purchase fireworks, but illegal to set them off. Figure that one out! But, being way beyond the age of setting them off myself, I shall be at Cedar Point tonight, watching magnificent fireworks explode over Lake Erie. Enjoy your evening, Mr Cavett.

Apart from being one of the most engaging writers to contribute to The Times, Mr. Cavett not only knows the difference between “lie” and “lay,” but also the past tense of “sneak.” It is not “snuck,” as other Timesfolk have it, but “sneaked.” Carry that torch, Mr. Cavett! Hold it high! And thank you.

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The host of “The Dick Cavett Show” — which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982 — Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets.” The co-author of “Cavett” (1974) and “Eye on Cavett” (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in “Otherwise Engaged,” “Into the Woods” and as narrator in “The Rocky Horror Show,” and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including “Forrest Gump” and “The Simpsons.” Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.